In the News Archive

In Japan at ATR Computational Science Laboratories, the first thoughts in history were successfully read via a computer -- and not just by guessing or even educationally guessing. Scientists began by showing test subjects the six letters that spell "neuron." Afterwards, by measuring the subjects' brain activity, they were able to reconstruct the six images and display them on a monitor. The images were fuzzy, of course, but obviously spelled neuron. ATR said that it's very possible that one day this technology will be able to read our dreams.

It's been exactly 40 years since a man, one of the greatest visionaries in the world of computing, showed a crowd things that they really, really didn't understand. The visionary showed things you could do with a computer that we can still barely do today. He was the first to show windows, a mouse, video conferencing, document collaboration, email, instant messaging, hypertext linking, and so much more. Yes, yesterday was the 40th anniversary of what would become known as The Mother Of All Demos. Please pay your respects.

Tech pioneer Hewlett Packard has had its ups and downs over the decades, but it's currently on the upswing, even during these trying economic times. #5 probably hits closest for OSNews readers: a renewed focus on innovation.

What stands a better chance of surviving 50 years from now, a framed photograph or a 10-megabyte digital photo file on your computer's hard drive? The concern for archivists and information scientists is that, with ever-shifting platforms and file formats, much of the data we produce today could eventually fall into a black hole of inaccessibility.

In a rather unusual move, both Google and Apple have publicly backed the fight against "Proposition 8", both by words as well as by donation. Proposition 8 is an initiative measure in the state of California that would ban same-sex marriages in California by amending the Constitution of the state to include that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California". Both companies gave out their reasoning for supporting the fight against 'Prop 8'.

Reason Online, the online presence of libertarian political magazine Reason, is featuring a book review of Cory Doctorow's book, Little Brother. Little Brother re-imagines George Orwell's classic, dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, as a modern cyberpunk thriller for a young adult audience.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz has an interesting blog entry about how Sun Microsystems will start introducing Nand Flash with ZFS as an enterprise storage solution by the end of this year. With the price of Flash memory already plummeting this could be an economical alternative to the expensive NAS solutions.

"The Japanese love those things!" That's what I've heard a lot of people say when I've talked to them about my latest obsession, the Coco 6035Re Bidet toilet seat. As part of OSNews' ongoing project, "Building The Wired Home," I wanted to try to see what the march of technological progress has brought to the bathroom, so we installed a bidet seat in OSNews' House of the Future. It turns out, I'm pretty impressed.

Application virtualization veteran Citrix, who last year purchased Xensource, today announced their intention to deliver XenDesktop, based on their thin client technology, for the iPhone. While similar applications exist in the form of VNSea, Citrix is a major player in virtualization and this certainly bodes well for those who want to connect to remote devices via their iPhone. Citrix demo'ed their wifi-only application at the Citrix Application Delivery Conference in Australia this week.

There's a battle going on in the technology world over Yahoo, the search and advertising company. Microsoft wants to buy it, and Google wants to sign deals with it. Microsoft has so far failed in buying the company, but Google has inked a deal with Yahoo this morning, which means Google will supply Yahoo with some search ads.

One of the biggest problems facing the European Union today is the fact that within its borders, 23 languages are spoken. This means that all the important documents have to be translated by a whole army of translators, which costs the taxpayer more than 1 billion Euros a year - and companies trading within the EU spend millions more. The EU-funded TC-STAR project aims to tackle this issue with technology: a system that eats speech in one language, and outputs that same speech in another.

One in five Nature readers -- mostly scientists -- say they up their mental performance with drugs such as Ritalin, Provigil, and Inderal. when asked how they felt about professional thinkers using drugs to enhance their cognitive performance, nearly 80% said it should be allowed. While this report reaches a different part of science, the usage of these drugs can be utilized by software developers alike. What is your opinion on this, somewhat new, development?

"Windows' enterprise adoption declined in 2007, with the gains going to Linux and Mac OS. Vista is a bust. Forrester published the data on Thursday, but only released it publicly today. Forrester surveyed a whopping 50,000 users at 2,300-plus large to very large enterprises throughout 2007. Windows' enterprise adoption declined 3.7 percent, going from 98.6 percent in January to 94.9 percent in December. Mac OS gained 3 percent, going from 1.2 percent to 4.2 percent in the same time frame. Linux gained 0.5 percent in 2007." A classic case of 'do with it as you please'.

A revealing Computerworld feature dissects offers a rundown on how Wikipedia and its various sister projects really work - the ideals behind Copyleft and the GNU FDL license, the people that contribute, the policies and guidelines that determine contributions, dispute resolution, the Wikipedia Hierarchy, and an amusing summary of some of the major controversies and lamest edit wars that have occurred within the world of Wikipedia. These include the Siegenthaler incident, the real size of the Death Star, whether the C# Programming language should be written with a hash or the musical sharp symbol, the real height of Andre the Giant, and the eternal conflict between British and US spelling. The story also looks at what the future holds for Wikipedia. An in-depth, revealing look at how the world's largest encyclopedia really works.